2-pyrone is a natural material used as a synthetic intermediate for various materials and having biological activity. It has recently become known that 2-pyrone derivatives have an HIV-inhibiting activity and as a result, 2-pyrone derivatives are receiving a lot of attention.
Phosphorus 2-pyrone derivatives are similar to the 2-pyrone derivatives in view of a structure of the biological properties. However, there are only 4 known methods of synthesizing the phosphorus 2-pyrone derivatives so far, and known structures of the derivatives are also extremely limited (Org. Lett. 2005, 7, 3299). Accordingly, in order to develop a reaction for efficiently synthesizing various phosphorus 2-pyrone derivatives, the present inventors developed a catalytic reaction using a gold (Au) catalyst to efficiently synthesize the phosphorus 2-pyrone derivatives including various structures.